Study Evaluates Interventional Use of Radioactive Beads to Treat Colon Cancer

January 19, 2013—According to data presented at the 5th annual Symposium on Clinical Interventional Oncology (CIO), patients who received minimally invasive treatment with yttrium-90 (Y-90) radioactive beads to treat colorectal cancer that had spread to the liver lived almost a year longer compared to those who received the standard of care therapy. The CIO Meeting is held in collaboration with the International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy (ISET) in Miami Beach, Florida.

The CIO/ISET press release also noted that researchers determined that the Y-90 treatment was more successful in patients who had not been treated with bevacizumab (standard of care biologic therapy) for at least 3 months before the minimally invasive radioembolization therapy.

The lead author of the study was Dmitry Goldin, MD, a radiology resident at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, Michigan. Dr. Goldin commented in the CIO/ISET press release, “Patients with liver-dominant metastases from colorectal cancer should be offered radioembolization in addition to chemotherapy because it may offer a survival benefit compared with chemotherapy alone.”

In the treatment, Y-90 radioactive beads are injected through a catheter into the arteries feeding the liver tumors. The beads lodge in the arteries and emit radiation to kill the tumors. The method allows high doses of radiation to be directed primarily to the tumors, rather than to healthy tissue.

As summarized in the announcement, the study was composed of 39 patients who underwent Y-90 radioembolization. Of these patients, 30 had also received treatment with bevacizumab. Radioembolization patients who received treatment with bevacizumab within the previous three months had a median survival of 30.5 months after diagnosis with metastatic colorectal cancer but those who had either not received bevacizumab or had been treated more than 3 months previously had a median survival of 37.9 months, although the difference was not statistically significant.

Taking into account all the study subjects, survival averaged about 11 to 12 months longer than historical survival estimates among patients who receive standard of care treatment with modern chemotherapy and biologics alone.

According to the CIO/ISET press release, the study found that bevacizumab reduces arterial capacity and that patients who had received bevacizumab within 3 months of radioembolization were more likely to have therapy stopped early due to slow blood flow. This resulted in delivering less of the prescribed radiation to the tumors.